It was a sunny spring morning, and even amid the noise from busy Baker Street the open window admitted the song of a blackbird. Holmes laid down the News Chronicle to address himself to a crumpet, still warm and anointed with melted butter. As he applied marmalade he remarked, ‘Is it not singular, Watson, how the human mind will concatenate isolated events into a narrative? Here he have two incidents in the same area: some animal has killed a few sheep in Hyde Park, and there are wild reports of a man with a wolf’s face roaming the streets of Mayfair. Now the efforts of journalists, ever eager for a good story, have joined the two into a fantastic tale of a werewolf.’
‘The belief in werewolves is ancient and deep-seated,’ I replied. ‘I have read a German folk tale collected by the Grimm brothers. Three men were out in the forest and, as they rested in the middle of the day one of them, waking from asleep, opened an eye to see another unbuckling his belt, which act magically transformed him into a wolf. The creature ran to an adjacent field, killed a young foal and ate it whole — the tale says “skin and all” — returned to the two men and became human in appearance again, believing itself unobserved. No doubt there are similar stories among many peoples.’
‘Indeed,’ said Holmes, ‘and the credulity of village folk is excelled only by that of journalists. But now, as we have no urgent tasks requiring our attention, I think we might visit the Hyde Park shepherd and get his account of the attack on his sheep.’
It was the custom of the park keepers to employ a flock of sheep to keep down the grass in the park. These were looked after by a shepherd who lived in a cottage in Park Lane. He would erect an enclosure of wattle hurdles to confine the herd, and also to shield it from roving dogs, and would move this around from place to place in the park so that the sheep were well fed and the grass everywhere well cropped. The shepherd had one skilled and obedient dog to move the sheep from one enclosure to the next. It was a convenient scheme that saved the labour of a gang of men with scythes.
We sauntered across Mayfair, taking alternate left and right turns to traverse the grid of streets, and soon found ourselves at Marble Arch, where we entered the park and looked across the Parade Ground at its north-eastern corner. The hurdle fence was visible at no great distance and we headed towards it.
The shepherd was not quite as I had imagined him. I had conceived a vague pastoral vision of a man in a smock frock and a shapeless hat chewing a straw as he watched over his flock. But he was wearing a shabby coat of ordinary cut that had once been black, and a battered bowler hat was set askew on his head. I was pleased to observe, however, that his trousers were tied with string at the tops of his boots. Seeing me gazing at these, he said, ‘It’s agin the ticks in the grass. Proper demons they are, crawl up your leg and bite you anywhere. And the bite can go bad, and then where are you?’
It was clear that he had been questioned more than once about the attack and was reluctant to talk about it, but a half sovereign from Holmes loosened his tongue and he gave us a good account. ‘Four days gone,’ he said, ‘I come from my cottage in the morning’ — he gestured eastward across Park Lane — ‘and two of my sheep was lying inside the fence with their throats torn out. They hadn’t been eaten at all, just killed and left on the spot. Now as you see, them hurdles is five feet high all around, and it’d take a bit of leaping to get over ’em.
‘I didn’t know what to do, but I stayed with the flock next night, and sure enough a great grey shaggy beast come leaping over the fence, And I yelled at it and it jumped out, and that were all I saw. My dog chased it but it were too fast for him. If it weren’t a wolf it were bigger nor any dog I seen in the park. But that wolf story, that’s just the papers, know what I mean?’
Holmes nodded, eager for more.
‘I seen a lot in the park when I been here nights, and there’s some mad folk with dogs that get their fun by coming in late and setting ’em on the geese and swans, no doubt of that. But getting a dog to jump the hurdles and kill my sheep, that’s different.
‘Anyhow, I talked to the park manager about it, and he got a couple of bobbies to keep a watch the next few nights, and we’ll see what we see. I done what I can for now.’
We thanked him and left. As we strolled up Old Quebec Street, Holmes said, ‘What he said was sensible enough, and no doubt the police will take care of the matter. But that is only half the story — we have a lurid tale of a man with a wolf’s face to examine.’
‘Do you think,’ I replied, ‘that some deranged person is wearing a mask that makes his face look lupine while he sets a dog on the sheep?’
‘It is possible,’ said Holmes. ‘There is no end to human folly. But at present we know of no eyewitnesses to the phenomenon.’
There was a newsvendor at the corner of Portman Square, with a handwritten bill hastily scrawled in charcoal on on his stand: ‘Mayfair wolf man seizes child.’ ‘This is more serious that we thought,’ said Holmes, buying a paper and reading the scanty but lurid details. ‘Whether or not these crimes are linked, there is somethinhg here that requires our urgent attention.’
We had scarcely regained our lodgings when there was an insistent tolling on the downstairs bell and Mrs Hudson bustled up to announce Inspector Lestrade. A moment later he was at the door looking, as we had often seen him, flustered.
‘Hve you seen the latest news of the abduction?’ he puffed as he recovered his breath from the short climb to the first floor.
Holmes inclined his head. ‘At the moment all we have is some lurid gossip from the evening paper, and wild rumours of a wolf-faced man.’
‘I will tell you what we have discovered so far,’ said Lestrade. ‘This morning a nurse employed by a family living in Park Street was taking their six-month-old boy out in the park in a permabulator. She soon met others of her kind, as they do daily in the park. And as they were conversing, paying little attention to their charges, one of them gave a horrified shriek. A passing man had leant over one of the permabulators — a common enough things, as people like to admire babies. But at once he seized a child and bore it off, and all the assembled nurses saw was a man running rapidly towards Park Lane, where he was at once lost among the houses.
‘A constable was going by and they raised the alarm. He soon summoned others with his whistle, and they questioned everyone they could find in the area. One of them had indeed noticed a person running with the infant in his arms, and she had been able to see that the abductor had a dark face — he was a negro.’
‘Are there any particulars of the child?’ Holmes asked.
‘Yes,’ said Lestrade. ‘I was about to come to that. The boy’s parent were of Swedish extraction, and the infant was of the most northern cast. His skin was very pale, his hair was almost white, and he had light blue eyes. At first glance you might have taken the boy for an albino.’
‘A full albino,’ I commented, has no colour in his eyes at all. They are pink, with red pupils, and the patient’s eyesight is gravely impaired by having no black lining to the eye to absorb stray rays of light that enter it at an angle. But the extremely light skin and hair of acandinavians, as you describe, present little danger other than a heightened liability to sunburn.’
But Holmes was looking more grave than I had ever seen him. ‘Lestrade,’ he said, ‘this affair, which you know to be serious, is more urgent than even you suppose. If I am not mistaken, the child has been abducted to be sacrified for the southern African practice of “muti”. The aherents of this evil cult believe that the limbs and organs of albino children are of great value for its rites, especially when the victim has been dismembered alive, as the screams while he is so mutilated are thought to add to the power of the spell.’
Lestrade had turned pale. ‘What can we do?’ he gasped. ‘Holmes, I am in your hands.’
‘We must act with the utmost despatch,’ replied Holmes. ‘But before we do anything else, we must hasten to consult our friend George. Come with me!’
We ran down the stairs and, coatless and hatless, hurried across the street.
— To be continued.
© Tachybaptus 2026
